The One Eyed Monk

St Charbel's Monastery

Previously:

After a tense dinner where questions about Joseph's past sliced sharper than the sashimi, April found herself hurtling through Lebanon’s mountains in his old Jimmy, chasing something far older than curiosity. A strange call had pulled Joseph toward Saint Charbel’s shrine, and despite his protests, April followed equal parts suspicion, ache, and awe. The climb was eerie, the silence sacred, and the man she thought she knew started unraveling at the seams.

Inside the shrine, April lit a candle and found herself cracked open by memory, haunted by the voice of her lost best friend Erika and the soft pull of something holy. But the peace didn’t last. When Joseph vanished into the fog, April went after him, only to stumble into a confrontation with a one-eyed monk from another world. A monk with secrets older than scripture, and a deal Joseph refused to make. Until April’s bracelet shattered the silence and everything changed.s

That something cold that slipped from my wrist, was my good luck charms. A sharp clink echoed off the stone floor like hail on tin roofs, betrayal on the stone.

My bracelet…

The goddamn bracelet.

My stitched-together talisman from other lifetimes, other versions of me: St. Christopher from the Vatican, a feather from a souk in Morocco, bronze hearts from Florence, the carved monkey from Nepal, a tiny silver ring that read carpe diem a parting gift from an old friend who showed me real magic, and the Raven’s eye from Erika, the one who always saw the storm before it hit. My entire story strung in fragments around my wrist.

And now it lay splayed across ancient stone, giving me away like a flare in the dark.

Both men turned.

The monk’s eye, the one locked on me, wide and wet, as if it had just remembered how to see. Smoky. Glazed. Eerie. As if he knew me from another life, or had been waiting for me in this one.

My breath caught. I couldn’t move.

"Yalla!" Joseph’s voice cracked like thunder. Then again, louder. "Apoup! MOVE!"

But I was frozen, my bracelet scattered like a crime scene, like evidence. The monk hobbled forward, eyes fixed, arm outstretched, his hand gnarled and shaking. He didn’t speak, didn’t blink. Just stared, reaching for the one piece of me I wasn’t willing to give. Like someone who should’ve been steering a ship of fools straight into the mouth of winter, not here in this hushed place of St. Charbel.

Joseph lunged like a cheetah. His voice cracked the air in Arabic, hard and raw, like stone against steel. I didn’t need to understand the words. Even if I had known Arabic back then, I wouldn’t have caught it. I was running on pure, uncut adrenaline, the kind you get skydiving at 12,000 feet or scaling rock faces with nothing but nerves and no rope. I felt it swirling behind my gut, the part that makes you almost vomit. Behind my ribs. In my marrow.

It was a warning.

It was a command.

It was a line in the sand, drawn in fire.

My hand shot out, shaking but determined, and I snatched the bracelet from the cold stone before the monk’s fingers could. He stared at me with that unblinking eye, a look that felt like it had followed me across time zones and lifetimes. I didn’t flinch.

That talisman, stitched together from people, places, and the pieces I’d bled for was mine. And no mystic pirate monk was taking it from me. Not today. Not ever.

I bolted. Out of the shrine. Through the fog. Through the static. Through whatever holy spell had just cracked open around us.

I ran like hell from that hallowed place.

Up the path. Past the olive trees and rusting prayer candles. Past the stone arch I had kissed on the way in. I ran until my lungs shrieked. Until my side cramped up like it hadn’t since high school soccer drills. I clutched my ribs, breathless, bent in half on the hill just outside the shrine.

And that’s when I saw him.

St. Charbel.

Stone and still, perched over the valley like a sentinel carved from ash and silence. His eyes eternally cast downward seemed to be looking right at me. Like he had watched it all go down and was trying to decide whether to weep or laugh.

The sun was just beginning to rise. The sky a bruised lavender. Snow started to fall quiet, cinematic flakes landing soft on my flushed cheeks. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. Slow. Deep. Intentional. But my mind was a wildfire of what the actual fuck, April.

Joseph, He didn’t say a word. Just appeared like a mirage.

Gently, he touched my shoulder and held out a bottle of water like an offering. He knew I loved water, had probably filed it under April, hydration- wierdo. People always made fun of me for it. And here, where no one carried water bottles, it felt even more bizarre. Like showing up to a black-tie dinner in yoga pants.

But somehow, he found one. Cold. Full. Exactly when I needed it most.

I took it, sipped it. Let the chill of it cool the wildfire behind my eyes.

“So… Apoup!” I said softly, testing the word on my tongue like a strange fruit.

“Yes,” he nodded. “That’s what I called you. Back there.”

“Apoup?! What is that?”

He shrugged with a half-smile, the kind that only comes after something insane, the calm after the monsoon.

“I guess it’s your nickname. I didn’t want him to know your name.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.” He answered

“Is it Arabic?”

He looked off toward the mountains, his eyes following something I couldn’t see. Snowflakes clung to his lashes like ash. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

And just like that, Apoup was born out of fear, fury, and some strange protection spell whispered in a monk’s shadow.

Joseph helped me string my bracelet back together using a loose thread from the lining of his jacket. Tied it like it was anointed. Which, to me, it was.

But the quiet didn’t last.

“Okay. Seriously,” I panted, still trying to catch my breath. “What is happening?! And also, shouldn’t we be getting the holy hell out of here?!”

Joseph’s eye’s softened, but he nodded. “Yes. But that monk’s not coming up here. You’re safe. And besides… he’s not about to mess with St. Charbel.”

I turned and looked up at the statue. Charbel stood stone still, gazing over the valley like a marble referee. His face was unreadable, disturbingly calm like even he had seen weirder and was just too tired to care.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere,” I said, hands on hips, “until I get at least some shred of what all this is.” I swept my arm toward the fog, the wild-eyed monk below, and the eerie stillness of St. Charbel above us; like a grand plié at the end of a Balanchine piece.

Joseph let out a breath, half-laughing at my dramatics.

“I know…” he said, shaking his head, still stunned. “Nobody really knows about this. Not my brother. Not even my closest friends.”

Then his eyes met mine. And something shifted like he was about to open a door no one else had dared to touch. “I guess I can’t keep kicking the can down the road,” he muttered. “Looks like I’ve finally run out of road. Is that the right phrase?”

I nodded. Even now, he somehow made the heavy stuff funny.

He let the silence settle, then continued slow, deliberate, like laying bricks back through time.

“This all started about three years before I met you. I was studying film at the university. A friend of mine told me about this group of monks real old-world, mysterious types who were starting a production studio. Not for profit or vanity, but for purpose. Their mission was to create documentaries, films, stories, real media meant to enlighten, to reach the parts of the Middle East where faith had started to feel like a relic. Their goal was to reignite something sacred, especially in the Muslim-majority areas, where they felt the Christian roots were nearly forgotten.

“These monks truly believed that the Christians of Lebanon and Syria weren’t just believers, they were the originals. The indigenous Christians. The first followers, before cathedrals and Vatican gold. But over the centuries, that community had shrunk. Eclipsed. Nearly erased. So the monks picked up cameras instead of swords. To tell stories. To preserve a lineage.”

Joseph played with his prayer beads as he spoke, twirling them almost like the original fidget spinners.

“They were looking for a studio manager, and even though I was still in university, it felt like the right move at the right time. So I jumped in. Full throttle. Ran the whole thing. I built the chroma rooms, bought the gear, spent a monastery’s worth of money building it from scratch.

The studio was near my university, tucked into a monastery just outside Kaslik. I was on a full scholarship at the Holy Spirit University, also run by monks. Some of them were ancient and checked out… but a few, like Brother John, were the real deal. He started this movement called The Forgotten, young volunteers who believed faith wasn’t about sermons or stained glass, but about showing up for people. Really showing up.”

“It was about rolling up your sleeves and doing the dirty work. The Forgotten was built for the ones no one talks about. Women escaping abuse. Kids orphaned by war or addiction. Elderly people left behind, too old to shop, too cold to survive another winter without help.

The Forgotten hit me hard. I didn’t want to just be a volunteer. I wanted to be in the room where the real decisions were made. Where we didn’t just react, we did.”

"More than once while you were with me here in Lebanon, I got the call “We need you” and had to drop everything.

One time, it was an old woman with a crumbling house they tried to buy out for a highway. She refused. Her kids had vanished to Europe, and she stayed all alone. She started rescuing animals, but they died, and she had no one to help her. The house was full of decay.

We were supposed to go to the beach that day. I left you at Rafik’s and spent hours burying animals, scrubbing the place clean so she could survive another winter.

That’s The Forgotten. We show up when no one else will."

I was in awe of this gentle giant, this peacekeeping man, and at the same time, part of me couldn’t believe any of it. This had to be made up, right? Some elaborate, wild story spun from late night edits and too much Arabic coffee?

I stared at him, still trying to piece it all together. “But how does the one-eyed, pirate monk fit into all this?”

Joseph cracked a smile. “I’m getting there.”

The studio was on the first floor, but upstairs… That was the monks’ cafeteria, pretty fancy stuff. Stocked fridges, imported cheese, wine straight out of a Vatican cellar. Eli, my assistant, and I worked late editing, waiting for calls from The Forgotten. Trouble usually only showed up after dark. When it didn’t, we raided the fridges like two dumb teenagers.

One night, around 1 a.m., we were up there as usual. Lights low. Dead quiet. Then we hear it… step… drag… step… drag. Straight out of a horror film.

We froze. Duck behind the fridge.

And then… he walked in.

One eye. A wooden leg. Lost to time.

He didn’t say a word. Just limps to the fridge, rips it open, grabs a handful of nuts, and devours it like he hadn’t eaten in days. Then he uncorks one of those antique wine flasks, like a vase, and drinks straight from it. No glass. No ceremony. Just chugs it like it’s water.

Joseph looked at me with a smirk, half warning. “That was the first time I saw him. The one-eyed monk. I didn’t know who or what he was yet. But something about him didn’t feel… mortal.”

Then bam, he slams the side of the fridge, maybe two centimeters from my face, and growls, “What the hell are the two of you doing here?”

Eli and I stepped out, caught red-handed. Too late to hide, so I went with what I always do, go with honesty. “Look,” I said, “you’ve got the best food here. We’re working late… figured we’d raid the fridge. Guilty.”

He stared at us, unblinking. Then finally, “Interesting. But your accent it’s a little off. Where are you from?”

“I”m Palestinian,” I answered.

That cloudy, mystic eye lifted.

“I live in a Palestinian refugee camp,” I clarified.

He squinted. “You speak Lebanese very well.”

“My mom is Lebanese,” I said. “I grew up around it. I know the dialect.”

“You, here tomorrow?” He asked aggressively.

“Yeah.” I answered.

“Good. Come to the cafeteria at lunch. Sit at my table. You and I need to talk.”

Eli pipes up, “What about me?”
The monk waves him off. “Not you. Get out of here.”

I thought I was screwed. I liked my job, I was paid well, respected, even as a Palestinian. At nineteen, I was running a full studio. Not fetching coffee. I kept thinking, Am I really about to lose all this over a handful of nuts and a sip of wine?

The next day, I finished class and headed to the lunch hall, not the private dormitory kitchen where we got caught, but the main mezzanine where everyone ate.

And there he was… alone at the lunch table, eating like a pirate. No etiquette. No shame.”

Joseph took my empty water bottle, tone shifting. “Little sidenote, Apoup. After the war in Lebanon, war criminals were supposed to get life in prison. All sides. But if you were considered a person of faith, you were exempt.”

I blinked. “So what happened?”

“They ran. Straight to monasteries, mosques, churches. Put on the robe. Instant protection.”

"People of the cloth," I said, hooked.

"Exactly," Joseph nodded. "And that one-eyed monk? Most definitely one of them. A war leader. Gave orders. Took lives. Then found God, or at least found cover."

He looked off for a second, then back at me. "At that lunch table, he asked where I was from. Dbayeh camp. I answered him matter-of-factly. Then he cut to it. Said he needed a million dollars’ worth of weapons. Offered me a hundred grand to make it happen."

I just stared at Joseph like a deer in headlights.

"He laid it all out. He’d ride in the monastery’s limo, I’d drive. No one checks religious vehicles. Just a holy man and his driver. We’d glide past checkpoints, clean. And even if we were caught, I’d be nothing but the guy behind the wheel."

"Back then, that was serious money. Still is!" I said.

Joseph nodded. “Could’ve bought a house, a car, and supported my family. And yeah, I thought about it. But the truth is… he wasn’t some redeemed soul. He was a war criminal in robes. Helping him would’ve made me an accomplice to God knows what.”

He paused, eyes hardening. “He said a new war was coming. Said the Christians needed arms to defend their villages. That’s when I walked.”

I stared at him, still trying to piece it all together. “So what the actual shit did I walk into today?”

“You are cursing a lot today,” Joseph exhaled, a half-smile breaking through.
“You walked into the final pitch. He asked me to meet at St. Charbel’s. One last offer. More money. One more appeal to duty and blood and history. And all that yiddy yaddah…”

His voice went cold. “And I refused. Again. That’s why your timing was dangerous. That man: robe or not should be in prison for the lives he’s taken. And you showing up, not knowing who he is or what we were saying that’s why I yelled. That’s why I had to go back and assure him you didn’t understand a word. Not one single word of Arabic.”

My gaze dropped to the ground. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I was still trying to process it all… the monk, the weapons, the history I hadn’t been ready for.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, barely audible.

Joseph’s voice softened, but the weight in it remained.

“We’ll come back to St. Charbel,” he said quietly. “But this... this was the last time you don’t listen to me.”

His voice wasn’t angry. Just worn.

“You’re in a country like this, in a situation like this… you either trust me or you don’t. But know this, trusting me could sometimes be the only thing keeping you alive. You’re making my job harder than it needs to be.”

He turned to me, eyes locked.

“When I said I didn’t want anything to do with weapons like that, I meant it. Safe or not. I know what that kind of power does to people. I’ve seen it. Maybe others would’ve taken the deal. Maybe most. But not me.”

He paused, letting the silence do some of the heavy lifting. When he spoke again, his voice was steady but tired like he’d had this conversation with himself a hundred times.

“Money never mattered. Still doesn’t. Even now, years later I know exactly who to call if I wanted to chase that life. I could play the game. Suck up to the right people. Walk away with more than I’d ever need. Power. Protection. Status. I could have it all.”

He looked out over the valley, the dawn curling around the trees like memory.

“But I’d lose myself in the process. And once you cross that line, there’s no going back. You don’t get to unsee it. You don’t get to wash it off.”

Then he turned back to me, eyes softer now.

“There’s a saying in Arabic, إذا تحالفت مع قرد لأنه يملك ذهباً، فقد يفقد الذهب، ويبقى لك القرد

If you team up with a monkey because it has gold, one day the gold might vanish and all you’re left with… is a monkey.”

I smiled and looked at him with a lot of respect and a little bit of doubt.

“That monk didn’t ask for help. He asked for a piece of my soul,” Joseph said quietly. “And I’ve spent my whole life trying to protect what’s left of it.”

He looked at me.

“So no. I didn’t take the money. I didn’t make the call. I chose the harder road.”

It felt as if everything paused for a moment.

“Everyone’s in the business of making money,” he added. “But I’m not.”

I didn’t say a word.

Even though I had my doubts about all of it. I believed him. I had to believe. I wanted to believe.

I just reached for his hand.

And held it.